123 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, April 17, 2021”

    1. If they were to invest every possible dime in solar farms, desalinization plants, and high tech irrigation systems that can cut water consumption by as much as eighty or ninety percent, they might be able to feed themselves without importing very much food.

      There’s maybe one chance in a thousand they will actually do so.

      Unless they either migrate or find something extremely valuable to export when their oil dries up, or the market for it dries up, which is possible but not likely im, they’re going to be WAY UP shit creek without a paddle.

      https://www.statista.com/statistics/1067068/population-saudi-arabia-historical/

      This kind of growth cannot end other than in a collapse, barring a miracle.

      1. They excelled at being hunter/gathers with a large population of 1.5 million.
        They will return to that, if the knowledge is still there.

        30+ million of overweight people living off a resource surplus?
        This will end badly, I think.

        1. You are quite the optimist, methinks.
          https://www.mic.com/articles/127458/scientists-say-climate-change-could-render-the-middle-east-almost-uninhabitable-by-2100

          It’s going to get really interesting in 50 years or so, when all the major powers in the Middle East start genocidal wars out of sheer desperation, because they’ll need more land to supply their increasing populations with the most basic commodities. I suppose the irony won’t be lost on some.

      2. Actually there is plenty of water in Western Saudi Arabia. In fact, the region suffers from massive annual floods.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dCbFusjIgQ

        The problem is poor land management. Instead of catching the annual rainfall, they let it flow into the Red Sea. In fact, the government has invested billions to see to it that the rainwater flows even faster into the Red Sea in the name of “flood protection”.

        This is extremely stupid. Many deserts around the world are in the same boat, including vast stretches of North America. Cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix has vast “flood control” infrastructure to move rainwater out of the city as quickly as possible, and then go hat in hand to the federal government begging for water subsidies. In fact they have more than enough rainwater for their needs.

        Did you ever notice that dinosaurs often get discovered in deserts? Ever wonder why? It’s because deserts are places where there is a lot of erosion. Erosion cuts through the more recent layers of sediment and gets down to older deposits. In most (but not all ) cases a desert isn’t a place where there isn’t enough rain. It’s a place where erosion has gotten out of control and the soil doesn’t have the ability to hold water.

        Here’s a video by a guy that thinks he could get rainwater-fed rivers in Mecca and Jeddah flowing with much less than the cost of a nuke. Las Vegas gets twice as much rain, and Phoenix four times or so.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T39QHprz-x8

        1. “Massive annual floods” is a wild exaggeration. Yes, they do get the occasional flash flood west of the mountain chain that sits almost right on the Red Sea. From Wiki:

          The western coastal escarpment of the Arabian Peninsula is composed of two mountain ranges, the Hijaz Mountain to the north and the Asir Mountains farther south, with a gap between them near the middle of the peninsula’s coastline. From an elevation of 2,100 metres (6,900 ft), the range declines towards the vicinity of the gap about 600 metres (2,000 ft).

          The mountain wall drops abruptly on the western side toward the Red Sea, leaving the narrow coastal plain of Tihamah. The eastern slopes are not as steep, allowing rare rainfall to help create oases around the springs and wells of the few wadis.

          Damn little rain gets over the mountains however. But just enough does fall on the eastern slopes to replenish the few wadis that are found there. But the vast amount of the rainfall falls West of the mountains. Jeddah sits right on the red sea and gets enough rain for themselves. Mecca lies further inland than Jeddah but still west of the mountains. Yes, the land west of the mountains has been mismanaged. They cut down all the trees and the land just washed away.

          But none of this has anything to do with the great deserts east of the mountains. They are deserts because they just do not get enough rain. Some rain falls in the northern part of the country but almost none falls in the Rub al Khali (the empty quarter), desert, which covers most of the southeast quarter of the country.

          I find your description of why deserts are deserts rather hilarious. The earth changes due to a lot of reasons. Dinosaur bones are all over 65 million years old. The landscape where their bones are found has changed many, many times since then and for a lot of different reasons, plate tectonics is just one of them.

          Sahara Desert changed from wet to dry every 20,000 years, study

          The Sahara Desert is known as one of the hottest, driest and most desolate areas in the world. It covers about 9.3 million square kilometers across North Africa.

          Primitive rock paintings and fossils excavated from the region suggest that the Sahara was once a relatively verdant oasis, where human settlements and a diversity of plants and animals thrived.

          Now, MIT scientists have analyzed dust deposited off the coast of West Africa over the last 240,000 years and found that the Sahara, and North Africa in general, has swung between wet and dry climates every 20,000 years.

          The evidence showed that at times, the Sahara changed to a very wet climate. This permitted plants and animals to develop and grow and led to the creation of human settlements.

        2. I have heard similar arguments about capturing water before.
          An example is Monterey County Calif.
          In this county the Salinas Valley is water short (and receives only about 15″ annual average rainfall), but nonetheless is always in the top 5 agricultural product value nationwide- almost all irrigated except some cattle grazing on the surrounding hills.
          Also there is no water available for residential/commercial expansion. You can’t even add a utility sink in the garage. This county has no mechanism for importing water outside its boundaries, and already recycles large amounts of water.
          People suggest controlling the the runoff from occasional massive winter storms that come onshore at Big Sur, with 4000 ft peaks just 20 miles upwind of the Salinas Valley below. These coastal mountains receive over 60″ of average annual rainfall at the higher peaks, just 5-8 miles from the ocean. This is rugged terrain! and the state struggles to keep the road from falling into the sea, let alone trying to build dams here.
          Economic an technical feasibility of dams in most of these kinds of places is simply off-the-charts poor, even if the motivation for water is off-the-charts high.

    2. Saudi-
      “They control rice farms in Ethiopia, Sudan and the Philippines, cattle ranches in California and Arizona, wheat fields in Ukraine and Poland, ranches in Argentina and Brazil and shrimp producers in Mauritania.

      In 2008, King Abdullah launched his “Initiative for Saudi Agricultural Investment Abroad,” urging Saudis to go overseas and buy land.

      Saudi investors – both state and private – have since gone on a global shopping spree, spending billions of dollars buying up or leasing large tracts of land around the world.”

      https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/saudi-agricultural-investment-abroad-land-grab-or-benign-strategy

      1. Saudi has no water and no agriculture save a few date palms. They did have a thriving wheat industry, using fossil water. Then the fossil water dried up and the wheat fields disappeared. Apparently, they thought this very deep fossil water would last forever. But it does not get replenished, it was always a finite resource, just like their oil.

        So their “Make Saudi Green” plans disappeared with the fossil water, they have a new plan. That is to buy farmland in other countries to feed their ever-booming population. Saudi has a population of 35 million people but 13 million are expatriates. That means their native population is 22 million. That compares to less than 4 million in 1960. Before 1930 25% of Saudis lived in the city, today it is 85%. Their population was mostly Bedouin herdsmen whose camels and goats grazed the desert scrubland. There is not much of that but then there were not that many people living in that vast country.

        Bottom line, when the oil is gone Saudi Arabia will be in desperate straits. There will be no possible way to feed that many people on the little food products produced in Saudi Arabia. So they must import food from their farms abroad. But if globalism collapses after oil, and I believe it will, there will be total anarchy in Saudi Arabia.

        1. I re-posted your last paragraph Ron, leaving out the particular country [Saudi].
          You can insert the name of just about every single country and get same truth.

          “Bottom line, when the oil is gone [ ] will be in desperate straits. There will be no possible way to feed that many people on the little food products produced in [ ]. So they must import food from their farms abroad [or from other countries if there is still any available for export- doubtful] . But if globalism collapses after oil, and I believe it will, there will be total anarchy in [ ].

          1. Hicks you are correct in your assessment The buying ,growing of food for domestic consumption in faraway lands is a “hail Mary” pass . As is said ” If you don’t control it then you don’t own it ” . Saudi’s don’t control ,the politics ,the weather ,the shipping routes etc in any of the countries they have the assets . I remember several years ago an Indian company purchased land in Ethiopia to grow mustard and sunflower and seeds to be processed for making cooking oil in India . The local tribes were against the transfer of land to the foreigners . The tribesmen killed a few Indian managers and the whole project was abandoned . This is reality .

        2. The dreaded elites will buy their way out; MBS et al, and their yachts, will reside in southern France, I would imagine. The riff raft will die in place.

      2. As Hickory points out, the MODERN way to obtain an empire is simply to BUY it from willing sellers, rather than send men with guns to TAKE it.

        Now whether the international system of trade and finance holds up, and with it, purchased ownership rights to farm land and other assets in other countries, is another question altogether.

        I can see a country such as the Philippines deciding to institute a one hundred percent export tax on grain and fruit, and making it nearly impossible for more than a small handful of Chinese nationals to actually live in their country.

        We live in interesting times, sure enough.

    3. And from the Seneca Effect post comments-
      -“Building a nuclear power plant to power a desalination plant … Saudis a”
      -“the dream of using nuclear power to desalinate water has been around for a long time. But reality is another matter…. It is about 10 (more typically 100) times more [expensive] than farmers expect to pay for water for irrigation. Not completely impossible, but very, very steep.”

      Like people in other parts of the world, better get used to getting by with less and less per person.
      Its past time to reverse the growth of population. Slow reversal at first as people get used to the idea, then picking up speed rapidly in the second half of the century.
      The effort, even if it happens voluntarily, will come too late.
      It already has.

  2. “
    David Stockton:
    ‘From a Darwinian standpoint, one could surmise that time will cure the problem. Groups who eschew vaccinations and all such interventions regardless of the science involved, will be eliminated from human gene pools at a faster rate than those who welcome the rather substantial health benefits that science has brought about over the last century. I wonder if any of the vaccine doubters are old enough to remember polio. Quite frankly I am more concerned about the harm that platforms such as facebook, twitter, and others poise to our freedom of speech and discourse when they delete content based on their own narrowly defined ‘truths’. I always have thought that the best way to defend the truth was to have open discourse, at all of the depths and breaths of the topic.’

    
GiveItAway:
    ‘It always intrigues me that people who advocate vaccination invoke Darwin to support their contention that those who reject vaccination will be eliminated from the gene pool, thereby confirming Darwin’s theory; when in fact the opposite is the case, because vaccination actually ‘blocks’ the operation of ‘the survival of the fittest’; in fact, if anything it promotes the survival of the naturally unfit and pushes evolution in a direction where the resultant phenotype will only be able to survive in increasingly artificial, man-made environments, increasing the likelihood of catastrophic obliteration. (BTW I have only read the paper cursorily, but the underlying thesis sounds interesting and I will have to give it a more thorough reading to understand it more fully)’

    David Stockton:
    ‘
Look around carefully. We are currently in the very place you elucidate i.e. an artificial, man made environment. And for better or worse, this shapes and controls our current and future genetic destinies just as much as nature which has over the past few billion years taken a single cell organism and turned it into you and I. It is a mistake to believe that Darwin was parsing conclusions when he penetratingly observed that it’s the environment you are in that drives evolution. Change is change regardless of whether it is by nature or by human contrivance.’

    GiveItAway:
    ‘
I understand your argument, and yes you could classify the process of adaptation to ever-changing man-made artificial environments as ‘natural’ selection provided the two operate on similar time-scales, largely dictated by the latter (i.e. over genearations) so that some semblance of equilibrium is reached and changes of type can be incorporated into the germ line; otherwise conscious interventions such as vaccinations to circumvent disease processes that arise within that artificial environment are best seen as social engineering and ameliorative, because the conditions for their reemergence still exist. In fact what you’re doing is instituting an ‘arms race’ between the disease/pathogen and the vaccine producers, as more virulent strains of the pathogen are selected for. Moreover, from a holistic point of view, you would ‘want’ the original novel pathogen to infect the host to enable a symbiotic relationship to develop and thereby prevent more virulent strains from emerging. But with vaccination you’re laying the groundwork for perpetual war. And just like in military conflicts where arms manufactures are in the box seat, so to speak, in the public health arena it’s the vaccine makers.’
    ”

    See also my most recent comments in previous thread.

    “Food, more than vaccines and weapons, is the ultimate means of control. Plant more food for everyone and you’ll lose control. “ ~ EGeist (The Oil Drum)

    (Don’t Fear) The Reaper

  3. EV news on Vancouver Island. A local (Large) logging company is slated to start using the TESLA truck platform for log hauling operations. Not for all of them, but for select areas. The runs are relatively short, with mountain supply sites (shows) transporting to tidewater. It looks like the plan is to haul what we call “second growth”. The dynamic braking has been plotted/estimated and should offset charging downtime as it is all downhill when loaded. The only real question I have about the project is the body integrity and tire options. These are rough gravel roads, often made with what we call shot rock…..granite blasted into chunks for a road base, then capped with smaller rock produced with more powder at blast. Occasionally, natural gravel pits are close by, but not often. The Tesla semi bodies look pretty streamlined and futuristic (light weight). They are supposed to replace trucks with 15′ bunks and capable of hauling between 90 and 150 tons. It is a grand experiment which might see limited success. Our electricity here is all supplied by hydro and is renewable.

    ………an interesting and short read about Pacific logging trucks. https://jennaindustries.com/the-history-of-pacific-truck-and-trailer/

    I’m not sure if the Tesla can slot in to the supplied photos.

  4. Random thoughts:

    “It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor…Now, there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed…Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights.”

    Today’s GOP will denounce the speaker of these words as a pinko Socialist Communist anti-capitalist Venezuelan enemy of the American Way.

    It’s from Lincoln, of course, in a message to the U.S. Congress, December 3, 1861.

    1. Thank you Nick!

      I will be making considerable use of this quote from time to time.

    2. Nick,

      Sounds like Lincoln had read David Ricardo who formalized the labor theory of value (LTV), it was state of the art in 1861, but in fact no one thing can be claimed as the objective source of value. We could choose, land, water, minerals, capital, or labor as “the” source of value. The choice is entirely arbitrary, every good could be boiled down to having value in units of any other good using linear algebra and a very large input output matrix. So an infinite number of value theories could be created and the LTV is simply one of these.

      See the work of Piero Sraffa at link below

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Sraffa

      2. Dennis,

        The problem here is that “capital” has grown too powerful, lately. By that I mean that income received by the owners of stock, bonds, real estate etc., has been growing much faster than wages for roughly the last 50 years. Wages are stagnating while profits, dividends, rents etc., are taking almost all of the increase in income. Income inequality is growing sharply within the US and many other countries (though income growth in developing countries is reducing overall global income inequality).

        Owners of capital have been waging a successful PR campaign to support this distortion, through Fox, Murdoch, Koch, etc.

        This kind of quote from a respected historical leader helps in some small way to counter the propaganda.

        —————————————-

        Here’s further discussion:

        “Wage stagnation for the vast majority was not created by abstract economic trends. Rather, wages were suppressed by policy choices made on behalf of those with the most income, wealth, and power. In the past few decades, the American economy generated lots of income and wealth that would have allowed substantial living standards gains for every family. The same is true looking forward: Overall income and wealth will continue to grow. The key economic policy question is whether we will adopt policies that enable everyone to participate in a shared prosperity, or whether the growth of income and wealth will continue to accrue excessively and disproportionately to the best-off 1 percent.

        The first policy choice should be to quickly restore full employment. The Federal Reserve Board can do this by not raising interest rates and slowing the recovery in the name of fighting inflationary pressures until wage growth is much, much stronger. Congress and the president can pursue the return to full employment by making public investments that can create both jobs and future productivity growth. After this, policymakers should support those labor standards that can restore some bargaining power to low- and moderate-wage workers in coming years. That means policy actions such as passing a higher minimum wage, expanding rights to overtime pay, providing paid sick leave, protecting the labor rights of undocumented workers, and restoring the right to collective bargaining. Policymakers should reject trade treaties that provide corporations greater rights and sap our manufacturing job base.”
        https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

  5. I used to be a hard core doomer, and I still believe most or at least a huge chunk of the human population is going to come to a very hard end, within the next century at the longest, but there’s a good chance a fair number of us will pull thru the bottleneck more or less whole……… with luck.

    There will not NECESSARILY be a WWIII, or a global pandemic that cannot be controlled, and the climate may not get so bad that we can’t grow enough food for those of us who live in countries such as the USA……… perhaps by dropping a long way down the ladder from steak to beans, but that’s better than starvation.

    Our transportation problems can be solved, and will be solved, as a matter of necessity, simply by traveling less, and localizing more production.

    And the technology that enabled us to get ourselves into our current predicament is also capable of helping us get OUT of it, and will help us.

    In debates about overshoot, many or maybe even most of us fail to understand just how fast technology can move in solving problems sometimes, and how fast it can go from something affordable only by the one percent to something affordable even to people on relief.

    The technology TESLA is perfecting now will be mostly off patent in less than twenty five years and available to anybody with the capital and expertise to put it to work.

    As the guy who wrote this piece points out Tesla’s LVCC is merely a first go at deploying a new way of building tunnels for transport, and it will scale up beautifully, both in terms of miles and capacity per hour.

    https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musk-boring-company-skeptics-calm-down/

    The day of boondoggles such as five or ten miles of new subway tunnel costing into the billions due to politics and union guys making surgeons salaries under work rules that prohibit a mechanic from installing a light bulb are going to be history …….. because the places where such conditions prevail will empty out, and the people will move elsewhere.

    Detroit didn’t go to hell in a hand basket because of any really serious problem other than that it’s cheaper to build cars and trucks elsewhere.

    It’s wonderful to enjoy high union wages and benefits, but if you making half as much, or less, on the best job you can find, well…….. it makes it hard to afford that new union built car you see…….. which is an OBVIOUS fact the people on the political left manage to ignore to a simply marvelous degree, lol.

    Let’s not hear any hard core liberal rants about rednecks being against unions. My old Daddy was a Teamster for fifty years, on his part time forty hour job in town, and I’ve been a member of the Operating Engineers, the NEA, etc, myself when the opportunity arose. Had I made the decision to stay in the trades as a career choice, I would have been a union man, no doubt, but I did as well or better, doing the same work for myself. There are things to be said for running your own machine building a road or lake on your own farm, and I have never wanted to do the same thing very long at any one time.

    I tried a few times to get into some other unions, but found out pretty quick if you wanted in, the key was to have a relative or very good friend in a position of influence to grease the wheels for you, lol.

    1. There will not be a sudden decline, I more believe it will be gradual and uneven among nations. The world economic forum (a little bit hated by some) say at least 1 billion people will be dislocated by climate change by 2030. I wondered if there really was a plan B to solve our fossil fuel dependency, and in 2018 I thought everyone was sleepwalking into a crisis. I think I maybe was all wrong about that. Many parts of the western world now has a disciplined approach to face the problems it seems.

      I am hopeful at least about Northern Europe’s approach to solving the fossil fuel dependency. You could argue that Germany and UK are overpopulated, but these kind of people along with the rest of Northern Europe are historically used to be disciplined to survive winters, and remarkably has set ambitious, but relatively realistic goals to electrify most of the economy. The labour party in Norway seems to be fronted in the media to win the election in autumn 2021. We go along with a cooperation model in Northern Europe it seems to almost completely electrify the economy. Norway is going to be the most extreme place when it comes to electrification for the next decade in the world. We are going to invest in wind power offshore for the most and use that (sweden as well) to electrify most transport; ferries, 20 ton trucks, buses/taxis, agricultural equipment, all personal transportation. In Sweden they experiment with wind/tubine hybrid ships. Brings us back a centrury?; well it is going to reduce energy consumption by maybe 80% at low speed limits and decent wind conditions. Hydrogen produced for 1000 long haul hydrogen trucks in 2030. In addition utilise electricity for battery production (and also export it to Germany and the UK); electrify and use hydrogen as needed for already incumbent aluminium and silicon production. Use electrolysis for hydrogen to also electrify steadily more fertilizer production (natural gas is the best for that; but hydrogen is the back up). Sweden is going to use hydrogen to produce steel from Kiruna resources in the north of Sweden, and in the north of Norway we are going to open a copper mine purely driven on electricity.

      Full throttle towards electrification, and Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, UK, Netherlands (and ofcourse more countries Belgium, Poland, France etc.; they are just a little farther apart from a norwegian perspective) are all onboard trying to make it work. I bet it will work somehow – it has to do with planning and strong sense of lojality to the government (in most cases). Wish us luck I guess. There are many countries that can have a big renewable potential US, Canada, Brazil, China comes closest to mind. And ofcourse Russia has all kinds of resources; fossil energy, hydro, wood, metals. It is the world’s largest nation in acreage, with limited population to be fair.

      1. If the Gods that be ( or not, imo) smile on us, we won’t have to rely on political pressure to get on with the transition to electrified transportation, etc, in the USA, or in some other countries, that are highly industrialized.

        Electricity will hopefully get to be cheap enough that it’s a no brainer to just go electric in almost every case. Personally I believe the odds are very much in favor of this happening, between fast falling costs of batteries and other electrical storage technologies or strategies, and the even faster falling costs of wind and solar power.

        I have redneck neighbors now who have had their complimentary ride in a Tesla, by way of a visiting relative who moved off to the big city a generation or two back, and they’re now admitting that if a new Tesla gets to be price competitive with Ford or GM cars, they’ll put up solar panels and buy one.

        That will probably come to pass within the next four or five years.

        Some of the most conservative people in the entire country, hard core right wingers all the way, including Bible thumping, are also among the wisest when it comes to getting the maximum value from their hard earned dollars. These folks typically buy a new car or pickup if they can afford one, and drive it twenty years and three hundred thousand miles before they even THINK about trading it off.

        They’ll go solar the same year, if they can, that they come to believe that solar panels are reliable and long lasting, and that the payment on them will be mostly offset by reducing their electricity bill, looking forward to the day they have only a trivial bill, once the panels are paid for.

        One thing you can say for Jesus freaks is that they are almost always seriously focused on the long term.

        1. Good points OFM. I think the money equation will make the advantage of electric vehicles and solar clear to everyone well before the end of the decade.

  7. I think nobody here is following the Covid calamity now taking place in India . The damage will look WWII like a walk in the park . So here goes .
    1. Acute shortage of oxygen . So acute that the Supreme court has instructed that no more oxygen be delivered to industry , all be requisitioned for medical purposes . 50,000 tons to be imported immediately .
    2. Bodies piling up at the crematoriums . Minimum wait 24 hrs . A chimney in an electric crematorium melted because of continuous around the clock operation from many days . Public parks are converted into crematoriums . Wood prices have shot up by 200% . The poor as using anything (including old tyres) to burn the bodies .
    3.15 million migrant labor are leaving the cities under lockdown . A bus capsized , capacity 75 but passengers 125 . 3 dead 7 in serious condition .
    4 . No doctors ,nurses or technicians in hospital . On 1st April the government did not renew the $75,000 insurance cover for the health workers .
    5. Police not reporting for work because they have no insurance .
    6. This is the second wave with the UK variant . Just 12 hrs ago the health ministry announced a new mutant which is a combination of UK and Brazil variant and has warned of a third wave even before the second is over . All supply lines are broken .
    7. Daily deaths 1800 . Daily reported infections 275,000 .
    Chaos .
    Earth shattering events and incidents .

      1. Nick G,

        That is correct. But i am assuming that 6%/day increase has exponential effects (6 months ~ 328,500 additional deaths), which they can’t handle possibly. Especially with the increase in covid cases, that 6% might even go higher.

        1. It takes a substantial amount of fuel to burn a human body down to powdered bone.

          I’m willing to hazard a guess that everything in India is running on a shoestring, and once problems start snowballing……….. nothing really works right anymore.

          I don’t know what they use for crematorium fuel in India, but I’m guessing they use some gas, and some wood, and maybe some coal. If the price of wood is up two hundred percent, that indicates that the people who cut and deliver it aren’t producing anything like their usual output.

          It’s gruesome to think about mass graves, but if a safe place to place such a grave is available, it’s likely imo that you could easily bury a thousand people six feet down or deeper with a bulldozer or track hoe with only fifty gallons of diesel. Such a machine will dig one hell of a big hole in four hours.

          1. Why the overload ? In India the cremation in 99.9 % of the cases is done in open air on a wooden pyre . Reasons are religious . Electric use is purely urban and that too opted by families who are not so religious or ritualistic . In Hinduism the bones after the body has been burnt are sifted by hand from the ashes by the nearest male kin to be and immersed in the Ganges ( if one can afford) or in the nearest river . This means that the pyre ground is occupied for two days ,the day of burning and the next day as the ash has to cool down overnight for sifting of the bones from the ash . Further the priests must be available for both occasions and this is along caste lines . Shortage of priests who are not venturing out afraid for their own lives . What we have is official data only since in India birth and death registration is not compulsory the poor just burn the body . The govt is suppressing the data as it is causing panic already . What went wrong ? The govt grew overconfident and dismantled the testing centres ,quarantine centres in March and proclaimed victory over Corona 1 . In first week of April Corona 2 came along . Since April there have been super spreader events :
            1. Kumbh Mela : Religious gathering of Hindu monks ,priests, individuals etc to take a holy dip in the river Ganges . Number of persons 4.1 million in one town . No tests, masks, social distancing ,hygiene etc . This is billed as the largest gathering of humans in one place in history .
            2. State elections : There are state elections in 5 states . 100 election rallies . Each rally is about 250,000 people . Total 25 million people . Same situation ,no precautions .
            3. Migrant labour ; 15 million want to go back to their villages to avoid getting stuck in a lockdown in the city . Overcrowded trains , buses ,taxi’s . No precautions
            4 . Ramadan ; 800000 workers returned from the Gulf and ME countries to join their family for Ramadan . They arrive in a numbers so huge and in such a short period that the system cannot cope . Maybe one can check at the airport but where do you quarantine 160000(20%) for two weeks ?
            So now there are 45 million persons roaming around , suspected to be with the virus and spreading it around .
            OFM , the Muslim community is doing mass burial ,a small relief . The electric crematoriums use gas . The problem is that gas is not piped so there must be a continuous supply via tankers or cylinders

  8. “#USSTRATCOM Posture Statement Preview: The spectrum of conflict today is neither linear nor predictable. We must account for the possibility of conflict leading to conditions which could very rapidly drive an adversary to consider nuclear use as their least bad option.”

    Who writes these statements?

      2. Hole. You’ve made a deliberate point to make denigrating comments targeting both of the last two anti-fascist candidates we have had run for president.
        I don’t know if you are some sort of white supremacist sympathizer, or someone on the Putin or Trump payroll, or some sort of fundamentalist religious zealot.
        Regardless, we don’t take kindly to foreigners chiming in unsolicited in our domestic political affairs.
        Play politics in your own country. Or just shut up.

        1. someone on the Putin or Trump payroll

          Don’t forget the Chinese: they also hate the idea of democratic elections, and so they also like to claim that there’s no difference between the two US parties.

          Baffling that anyone would believe that.

        2. I’m American, Hickory. How about you stop stealing elections to place a demented non entity in just because you didn’t like the President who happened to be quite popular with the rest of us.

          How about you support cops who are doing difficult and dangerous jobs, and not criminal thugs drowning in illegal drugs who go to jail or die because of their chaotic behavior?

          We’re tired of your BS, and you guys know it, and you guys know your party is ending soon and there is no liberal multiracial kumbaya happy ending on the other side. And you are really, really pissed off about this.

          We are winning. Humans are remaining tribal, now, and forever.

          1. It’s hard to tell who you are talking about Dolph. Do you mean Republicans who are stealing elections by passing laws that keep the underprivileged from voting? If so you are correct. That party is dying. They are dying because younger people see through their racist bullshit. They are the party of the top 1% who have convinced the “poorly educated” that they are on their side. They have made fools of them and they are just too dumb to realize it.

            Of course, anyone who believes Trump’s “big lie” that he actually won, is dumb as dirt. That’s why Trump loves them. They are so dumb that they think he is on their side.

          2. Dolph.
            I feel sorry for you, when I see how little thinking you do on your own.
            You allow your self to be spoon fed falsehoods, you absorb them and then regurgitate it.
            Be careful to choose what you feed yourself more carefully, or else you will never have a healthy and well-functioning brain, or respect.
            btw- the vast majority of democratic voting people are pro law and order, and policing. But police brutality is not tolerable. Try to not get confused by this distinction, even though fox/trump wants you to be confused.

          3. Dolph says -“We are winning.”

            Well the party representing white supremacy, the theocracy, and the economic interests of the billionaires is not winning.
            In the past 8 presidential elections dating back to 1990, the republican candidate for president only won the popular vote once.
            One time only- 2004.
            Trump lost twice, by 2,9 million votes in 2016 and 7.0 million votes in 2020.
            The average margin of victory by the democrats over the past 8 elections is over 4.4 million votes (includes the numbers from the year they lost on 2004).

            This trend is making the republicans desperate, thus the attempts to
            -restrict voters access to the polls
            -brainwash the electorate into thinking that the far left ideals dominate democratic policy making
            -convince the voters that the election is fraudulent [only if they lose]
            -convince voters that news is fake [only if it is inconvenient to their story]

            They know that the electoral college advantage they hold will only last so long.
            Desperation among their strategists.

          4. If you want to support cops maybe you should support training them. The incompetence of American policing is breathtaking, and it’s a major part of the problem.

            Nobody should be a cop with less than 2 years of training.

  10. Hi all,

    Thought people might find this interesting. So looking at GDP growth rate vs CO2 growth rate. Data for GDP growth annual % change is courtesy of worldbank. CO2 growth rate (year on year) is courtesy of NOAA.

    For Dennis:
    R^2~8%
    tstat~7.4
    p-val~2.15E-11

    As we can see the linear regression of GDP growth rate and CO2 growth rate crosses around 2012, so maybe the Mayans were right lol.

    1. Are you able to generate a graph of global GDP vs atmos CO2 level (as long term as possible)?
      I think that may be more illuminating.
      Thanks,

      1. Hi Hickory,

        The data for long term CO2 levels is probably easier to find than long term World GDP levels. But if anyone has the datasets for both, I’ll plot them for you no problems.

        The current datasets I got go back to ~ 1960 for both, I believe.

      2. P.S nevermind here is the plot for you. Note as we go back the uncertainty of the data becomes greater. The tstat and p-value signify a strong relationship between gdp and co2 emissions.

        The plot for historical World Nominal GDP vs Historical CO2 emissions. Both courtesy of ourworldindata.

        1. Thanks Iron Mike.
          It would be interesting to see that for just last the 100 years.
          One small point= the CO2 should be labeled CO2 level ppM (rather than emissions).

          You are most impressive with your charting and statistics work.

          1. You are welcome and yes that was a mistake cheers for picking it up. I can do a 100 year chart for you tomorrow.

    2. Mike, a few thoughts:

      The linear regression for GDP looks like it has a very poor fit: an r squared of 8% basically means that a straight line doesn’t fit at all. I’d say, just eyeballing it, that world GDP growth has been pretty stable since about 1980.

      An analysis for the whole world doesn’t really make sense: the OECD has a very different path from China, which is very large, has relied heavily on coal, and sustained high GDP growth rates for quite some time. So, it makes more sense to break those two things down into at least 2 subsets for analysis.

      1. Nick G,

        The R^2 is low because the datasets seems to be inversely correlated in terms of growth rate. The linear regression might be off because of the last data point (covid), but the trend is downward regardless for world GDP growth rate. tstat that high and p-value that low implies World GDP and CO2 emissions data reject the null hypothesis due to a possible high enough sample size we can assume an underlying relationship if the qualitative analysis is conclusive. (Which might be rejected or accepted based on the causation. Some possible hypothesis maybe a delay in CO2 re-absorption rate, positive feedback, increase in CH4 etc)

        In any case these kind of results usually mean we don’t have the whole picture. So World GDP seems to be trending downwards with population growth rate, while CO2 growth rate is still trending upwards. I made a plot of world GDP growth rate vs Population growth rate. I may post that chart next.

        Feel free to break the data into subsets and plot the respective datasets or if you want i’ll plot them. I’d be happy to look at it if you supply the datasets. Right now i am only looking at macro.

        1. Linear regression is a poor fit because there are a large number of variables involved. Organizations like the Fed use linear models with 500-1000 variables (and 500-1000 equations) to model the economy. That is where then “unexplained” comes in.

          It’s also worth pointing out that you have less than a hundred GDP numbers to work with. This undermines the predictive value of your charts. It’s worth remembering the Law of Small Numbers, a little joke by Richard K. Guy: “There aren’t enough small numbers to meet the many demands made of them.”

          Huge datasets are susceptible to statistical analysis. Small datasets are what my mother used to call “a blind man’s paradise”.

          I predict that carbon dioxide emission will correlate strongly with GDP until the two stop correlating strongly. Then, with 20/20 hindsight, we’ll all say, “Needless to say, blah blah blah”.

      2. Nick G,

        I read up some more on low R^2 and low p-value since it is an interesting phenomena. Have a read of this when you get a chance or if interested.

        https://blog.minitab.com/en/adventures-in-statistics-2/how-to-interpret-a-regression-model-with-low-r-squared-and-low-p-values

        The good news is that even when R-squared is low, low P values still indicate a real relationship between the significant predictors and the response variable.

        Also from reddit:
        Your low R2 value is telling you that the model is not very good at making accurate predictions because there is a great deal of unexplained variance.

        The low p-value, on the other hand, tells you that you can be reasonably sure that your predictor does have an effect on the dependent variable.

        1. Well, I think that last paragraph has to be phrased differently: a low p-value tells you that the relationship between the two variables is unlikely to be caused by pure chance. If, for instance, p-value is .01 then you’d have to rerun your experiment 100 times to replicate the result just once purely by chance.

          But…it doesn’t tell you the direction of causality. Your X variable could affect Y, or Y could affect X.

          Why is that important? In this case, changes in fossil fuel consumption causing changes in GDP is very different from changes in GDP causing changes in FF consumption. And, I’d argue that in fact rising (or falling) GDP is what causes FF consumption to rise or fall. More people order pizza, more pizza is delivered so more gasoline is burned. More widgets are assembled so the factory puts in a second shift and the assembly line runs later and the lights burn later, and more FF generated electricity is consumed.

          If solar power replaces coal generation, CO2 emissions fall but GDP is unaffected (all else being equal). If people drive hybrids or EVs then emissions fall but GDP is unaffected.

          In other words: emissions are not needed to have healthy GDP. Falling GDP will cause falling emissions (as we saw last year, and in 2008), but falling emissions won’t necessarily cause falling GDP.

          1. Nick G,

            There is a couple of big ifs in your second last paragraph. I mean you could be right, but that remains to be seen.

            emissions are not needed to have healthy GDP
            That also remains to be seen. So far the data is not showing that.

            Falling GDP will cause falling emissions
            That’s not true. GHG emissions seems to be increasing, even last year the data shows an increase both in CO2 and CH4. In fact surprisingly CH4 had the highest growth rate since recording began in 1984, last year. NOAA data: (last data points)

            https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2/co2_annmean_mlo.txt

            https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/ch4/ch4_annmean_gl.txt

            but falling emissions won’t necessarily cause falling GDP.
            That could be true. But it remains to be seen.

            P.S I made a programming error. The R^2 of GDP growth rate should have been R^2 = 27%. R^2 of CO2 emissions was 55.5%. Both is due to a high variance in the data.

            My conjecture is that the law of diminishing returns could be playing out for GDP growth. Emissions increase could be the result of positive feedback, or a lag in its correlation with GDP maybe. I am probably wrong on both. The keyword is conjecture.

            1. Here’s a source for emissions falling in 2020:

              “ After rising steadily for decades, global carbon dioxide emissions fell by 6.4%, or 2.3 billion tonnes, in 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic squelched economic and social activities worldwide, according to new data on daily fossil fuel emissions. ”

              https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00090-3

            2. Nick G,

              The article also says emissions bounced back quickly second half of the year. I’ll personally go with the NOAA data. In any case are you suggesting the NOAA data is wrong?

            3. Mike,

              I don’t know why the two sources seem to conflict, but Nature is a generally reputable source. I’d note that the NOAA data is for atmospheric levels, not emissions. Obviously they’re closely related, but they’re not the same (one is, loosely speaking, the integral of the other; total levels are affected by both emissions and natural sequestration; total levels are affected by agriculture and other sources which are less volatile than transportation and manufacturing, etc. etc., etc).

              As you note, timing issues can be important: if the economy crashes for part of the year and starts to come back, it may not be easy to capture it’s behavior with a simple annual number, and the same thing applies to emissions.

              Finally, the 2020 economic data is still being revised. For instance, China’s GDP is now reported as having grown in 2020 (and we can certainly expect that their 2nd half GDP was much stronger than the first half).

            4. >>but falling emissions won’t necessarily cause falling GDP.
              >That could be true. But it remains to be seen.

              Actually it doesn’t remain to be seen, it’s already been happening for decades. For example carbon dioxide emissions in Germany have fallen by about a quarter since 1991, while the economy has grown by maybe 2% a year.

            5. Alim..- I wonder about the correlation between GDP and electrical consumption in Germany. I suspect its fairly closely correlated. How do you see it?

        2. A discussion of p-value reminds me of an analysis I did once, where I tested 20 different variables for significance. One of them got a hit, and I was excited, and then I remembered I was using a p-value of .05, which meant that when I ran the experiment 20 times I should expect exactly this result purely by chance: one positive out of the 20 trials.

          And I was back to the drawing board…

  11. There’s some reason to believe that the technology that’s allowed us to get into such a mess might also help us get out of it.
    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/ultra-white-paint-may-someday-replace-air-conditioning-180977560/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20210421-daily-responsive&spMailingID=44842430&spUserID=ODQyMTI2NTExMjMyS0&spJobID=1983622500&spReportId=MTk4MzYyMjUwMAS2

    If this paint holds up in service, and it really does sell for only forty bucks a gallon, as the article suggests, because the materials are cheap, it’s going to be a total no brainer.

    Now I need to get to daydreaming and figure out a way to keep it CLEAN.
    My guess is that there aren’t very many places where it’s needed where the ambient air is clean enough to allow it to continue to function properly.

    1. Interesting. Barium. That stuff is heavy!
      Good point about keeping the soot off.

      Last year the fire ash in California made solar panels less efficient.
      One cycle of dew and it starts to form a grey cement like substance.
      They actually call the process cementation, and its not just with ash, but with all kinds of dust and particulates.-
      Here is an example of the kind of study being done on this topic-
      https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S092702481830360X

  12. Let me clarify, Hickory. I’m not necessarily saying Republicans are willing. Because clearly it’s a mixed bag if you look at the results. Trump won 2016, and Republicans won quite a few seats in 2020, but not enough to prevent the so called Biden victory and other Democrat victories. So yes, I’m not claiming that Republicans are winning. Republican vs Democrat is a just a small part of the picture.

    What I’m talking about is this: everybody who understands and feels human tribal dynamics is winning. All the time, people everywhere are separating, going their own ways, doing their own things, and associating with like minded people. And everywhere, globalists and universalists are being proven wrong. We are not 8, 9 billion people “in this together”. We are not going to have one gigantic global orgy, in which supposedly nations will disappear, races will disappear into a universal brownish hue, the classes will unite, everything will be managed by a global government, with of course America at the helm, etc. That is not happening.

    What’s happening everywhere is separation. Nations are remaining strong as ever, and some subnations are emerging. Most people of race choose to procreate with each other. Most people are hanging onto their own languages. Most people are hanging onto their religions. Classes are dividing as well: the rich are running away with all the money and want to keep it that way.

    So basically, division and conflict are remaining the norm for human beings. We are not all being homogenized into one global “worker and consumer” society with no differences, and no expression of difference. Differences are remaining entrenched.

    And that’s a great thing, because it proves we are still human, and still value things other than merging into one gigantic world borg. And you are disappointed in this, aren’t you, Hickory. You wish it really was billions of people all feeling we are exactly the same, with no difference in outcome, no difference in what we value, etc.

    1. Trump won 2016, and Republicans won quite a few seats in 2020, but not enough to prevent the so called Biden victory and other Democrat victories.

      The so called Biden victory? That statement alone proves you are a fucking idiot. Idiots should be ignored, not argued with.

    2. What Ron said.

      And regarding tribalism- yes I agree.
      Tribalism is getting the better of democracy and a unified country in this the “United’ States.
      If there was a clean zipper upon which we could split the country- it would be done. With a wall at the border.
      And trade sanctions likely.
      I don’t know how to reverse it.
      Most people are too dug in with their belief systems, or too ignorant to hold an intelligent and well-informed conversation about policy choices.
      And so we have a full blown tribal culture war going on.
      Its not new, but the forces of separation have made great strides of late.
      The same mentality that elected hitler/nazisn in the 1930’s in Germany is at play here in the USA a couple generations later- and it voted for trump, and is so desperate for something make believe and simple that it doesn’t even realize the hole of falsehood and anti-democracy stance that it has fallen deep into.
      Yeh, the democracy and the one country are at stake.
      Russia, Iran, China , ISIS/Al Qaeda/Hezbollah, and N. Korea are all smiling at the fortunate time they had during the past 4 years as this country floundered.

      1. “the forces of separation”. Is that and the references to Hitler and the Nazis some thinly veiled anti-Semitism?

        1. Rotary- to the contrary, the reference was solely about how the republican voters mentality that allowed them to justify selecting trump over all the other republican candidates running against him was the same mentality that allowed Germans to select a fascist and racist authoritarian in the 1930’s.
          And this mentality does indeed have a strong white supremacist element in both the 1930’s and now in the USA. Not just antisemitism, but against any group that is not white/male/christian.

      2. Former Australian prime minister Malcom Turnbull suggests that all of this is not a mere coincidence. He suggests that it is largely driven by one man and his media empire in tesimony to an Australian senate hearing on media diversity (YouTube):

        Malcolm Turnbull’s full evidence to the Australian Senate Media Diversity Inquiry

        Also covered in the following Financial Times article:

        Murdoch’s News Corp accused of undermining democracy

        Malcolm Turnbull has accused Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp of eroding democracy in the US and Australia by dividing people and undermining institutions with lies and populist rightwing ideology.

        The former Australian prime minister told a parliamentary inquiry that Donald Trump’s presidency was to some extent a creation of the media mogul and that the attack on the US Congress in January was a consequence of partisan campaigns led by Murdoch’s Fox News.

        “What does Vladimir Putin want to do with his operations in America? He wants to divide America and turn Americans against each other,” said Turnbull, a trenchant critic of Australian-born Murdoch, whom he has known for 45 years.

        “That is exactly what Murdoch has done: divided Americans against each other and so undermined their faith in political institutions that a mob of thousands of people, many of them armed, stormed the Capitol.”

        Turnbull, who blamed News Corp for his ousting as prime minister in a Liberal party coup in 2018, alleged News Corp outlets were “utterly liberated from the truth”. He also questioned whether Fox News’ relationship with Trump was comparable to state-owned media in an authoritarian country, by apologising for and not holding to account its favoured government.

        “I’ve hung around billionaire media proprietors for a long time. I have never seen a politician as deferential to a media proprietor as Trump was to Murdoch, ever, in any country,” he said. “Murdoch’s media in the US had a symbiotic relationship with Trump.”

        Also somewhat covered in the Guardian:

        Turnbull tells Senate inquiry Rupert Murdoch admitted ‘crazy agenda’ to restore Abbott as leader

    3. the rich are running away with all the money and want to keep it that way.

      Yes, they are. And 95% of the country saw their income stay the same or fall over the last 40 years.

      Is that okay with you?

    4. I’ll repeat what Ron has to say about you , Dolph.
      The so called Biden victory? That statement alone proves you are a fucking idiot. Idiots should be ignored, not argued with.

      He’s absolutely dead on. You’re obviously either a cynical Trump type troll,or else falling down drunk on Trump/ Republican kool aid.

    5. Seems like one massive straw army. Who now exactly are the proponents of global homogeneous mono-ethno-culture? I thought the libs were in favor of multi-culturalism.

  14. World Population growth rate. We might go below 1% within the next few years. My conjecture is this has an affect on GDP growth rate also.

    1. I try to emphasize, from the farmer perspective, that while everything is tied together in one giant web, biologically, all over the world, the large majority of problems involving populations of plants and animals are best understood by looking at local and regional levels, with regional going up to areas as big as a sub continent such as India or Sub Saharan Africa.

      Most of the highly developed world simply doesn’t have a short or medium term population problem. Birth rates have fallen to the point it’s fairly obvious such parts of the world will peak and gradually start to decline within a couple of generations, as for instance here in the USA. Now such places DO have a resource problem, and can’t indefinitely sustain today’s populations, but that’s for another discussion.

      The places that are in REAL trouble, short to medium term, such as Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, India, etc, aren’t going to determine what happens world wide, except possibly by being partly responsible for climate troubles.

      Barring extraordinarily good luck, I fore see the people in such places dying in place on the grand scale, in a sporadic fashion, piecemeal, as the coming bad years hit and food and water supplies fail.

      Somehow I just don’t think the rest of the world as either the will or the capacity to save such people, not when they’re dying by the millions due to starvation, thirst, disease, etc.

      I fear most of the people in places such as the USA and Western Europe will not be willing to give up red meat in order to ship enough grain, etc, to support them on the necessary scale.

      But just MAYBE, with the arrival of more and more tv’s, radio’s, internet connections, etc, in such countries, the women will decide they’re just not going to be baby factories, such as happened in Brazil a few years back.

      In that case most such areas might be lucky enough to pull thru without losing more than maybe a quarter of their populations. Take a quarter of the people out, and the following year’s crop, plus aid from other countries, might be enough to make it thru another year……. or even four or five years.

      1. Spot on OFM, and its a devastatingly critical scenario facing humanity. I suppose that most the worlds ‘food secure’ will roll up the windows on their air-conditioned limo and roll through the shantytown as quickly as possible, so to speak.

        People talk about the falling population growth rate, but lets keep in mind that in many parts of the world the human population growth momentum is in full gear, and we will be adding another billion people to the food line by 2035!

        https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/dependence-on-food-imports-threatens-developing-countries-report-finds/
        ““If flooding was to hit the rice production of Vietnam’s Mekong delta, then people in the slums of Lagos and Nigeria would no longer be able to afford staples such as rice,” warned another of the study’s contributors, Felix Creutzig. This shows a clear link between the climate risks of one region and the level of hunger in another part of the world.

        By 2050 studies predict that many countries will be [attempting to] import over 1500 kcal/capita/day, based on water scarcity.
        A few examples include- Cuba, Egypt, Iraq, S. Korea,
        https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258991471830001X

      2. Interesting comment OFM. The farmers perspective is always welcome and usually insightful. Your prediction is very reasonable in my opinion.

        1. Nick, here are two types of rice.
          Paddy rice grows where water is adundant. Land that was swamps, or on terraced hillsides in places where it rains abundantly. Stand along a terraced hillside with rice paddies and you hear hundreds of streams trickling through the landscape. You will never forget it.
          Upland rice grows more like wheat, in tropical and subtropical zones relying on rainfall.

          In most places, water scarcity will affect other crops long before rice.

          1. Interesting. I think that paddy production accounts for almost all rice:

            “Rainfed upland rice covers about 14 million hectares but, because of many constraints, the productivity from these areas is typically low with yields of about 1 t/ha. Upland rice contributes only about 4% of the world’s total rice production.”

            https://ricepedia.org/rice-as-a-crop/where-is-rice-grown

            Here’s a bit more about water management. This focuses on China, but this is a universal problem:

            “In order to produce one unit of GDP, China uses seven to fifteen times more water than OECD countries. Water prices in China do not reflect the reality of supply and demand. China’s average water price is 70% to 80% below water prices in countries with no water shortage.”

            http://www.ichinaforum.com/interviews/solutions-chinas-water-crisis

            1. I did a little more reading about rice in India. About 1/2 of their production is indeed irrigated midlands. So, with drop in groundwater or loss of dependable river flow they will see a lot of pressure to switch away from irrigated rice.
              The alternatives then become lower yielding crops like millet, wheat sorghum, lentils, dryland rice, etc. They already have vast acreages of these dry land (rain only) grains being grown.

    1. Following up on my 5 25 am,

      “by SL Colby · Cited by 376 — When the first baby boomers turned 65 in 2011, there were just under 77 million people in this population. By 2030, when the baby boomers will be between 66 and 84 years old, that number is projected to drop to 60 million and decrease further by 2060 to only 2.4 million.”

      Biden and Harris are likely imo going to win again in 2024, although it’s too early to say.Harris could carry us right thru to twenty thirty two, with some luck in terms of the economy, etc.

      With only sixty million of us still around, I anticipate at least five million being unable to vote due to senility or other disability, and that five to ten million, optimistically, may come to understand that the welfare state is a very good thing for old people, lol, and switch to voting for democrats or simply quit voting due to disgust with republican policies, even if they can’t bring themselves to vote for a pink and green commie libtard, lol.

      And of course the youngest of the boomers are also the best educated, meaning that they’re much more likely to vote for Democrats.

      You don’t have to move very much material from one end of a balance beam scale to make it flip decisively toward the other end.

      1. OFM, declining church attendance may have consequences…

        >> But if secularists hoped that declining religiosity would make for more rational politics, drained of faith’s inflaming passions, they are likely disappointed. As Christianity’s hold, in particular, has weakened, ideological intensity and fragmentation have risen. American faith, it turns out, is as fervent as ever; it’s just that what was once religious belief has now been channeled into political belief. Political debates over what America is supposed to mean have taken on the character of theological disputations. This is what religion without religion looks like. <<

        Evangelicals are running scared, feeling cornered and trapped. Beware such an animal…

        https://frankschaefferblog.com/2021/03/via-the-atlantic-america-without-god/

        1. I couldn’t help but notice over the last year that the Black Lives Matter protests and shrines to George Floyd in big cities around the country have become like a new form of faith for those who’ve turned their backs to traditional religion.

          1. Now how would you know they have turned their backs on religion? It is likely that most of the people who mourn the murder of George Floyd are deeply religious. At any rate, you have no way of knowing whether they are religious or not so you are just making shit up.

            1. Have you not been paying attention to how some of the loudest voices in the Black Lives Matter movement are woke white liberals? As a rule, those types aren’t particularly known for being deeply religious.

              Also, George Floyd did not deserve to die the way he did, but the melodramatic way the mourning over his death has carried on fails to acknowledge that he, like so many other black people who have been subjects in officer-involved shootings, put himself in the situation he was in by engaging in unlawful activity–first by ingesting illicit substances, then by attempting to use a counterfeit banknote. Had he chosen to remain within the law, would he still be alive today? Ignoring his worrisome health conditions that came up in the trial over his death, the answer is most likely yes.

          2. PHF said -“Also, George Floyd did not deserve to die the way he did, but the melodramatic way the mourning over his death has carried on fails to acknowledge that he,..”

            The Romans said the same thing about the man named Joshua (Jesus, to some).

            To his other point, you can see that people without religion are far more compassionate in real life than those who go to church.

    1. Every once in while another professional farmer will make a comment or two, but mostly I’m all alone in this forum, in terms of my background.

      The link Mike posted should be required reading, period, for everybody who wants to know anything at all about agricultural realities.
      I don’t have time at the moment to go thru it, point by point….. but the authors have a very very solid case.

      I can’t see organic agriculture having a snowball’s chance on a red hot stove of displacing conventional industrial agriculture within the next couple of generations, under even the most optimistic scenarios, including some involving near miraculous technological break troughs.

      More later.

      1. OFM, what’s remarkable to me is that the person at the website who successfully debunks the organic argument–Steven Novella (who is no slouch)–is himself enamored of the superstition that farming can ever be “sustainable.” Anybody who knows the work of Albert Bartlett knows that is a crock.

        1. There are many species that have been around for quite awhile longer than we. They have also likely never heard of Albert Bartlett.

      2. One could say that conventional industrial agriculture is brute-force ignorance agriculture.
        Like anything that would, relatively-speaking, ignore nature while working against it in its ignorance, it’s days would appear quite numbered, if only for our species’ sake. Two generations? That would seem to be a generous time-span for many more to jump that ship and get into natural farming and the like. That’s not to suggest that the planet/we have that kind of time though.

  18. Natural farming

    ”Fukuoka’s ideas radically challenged conventions that are core to modern agro-industries; instead of promoting importation of nutrients and chemicals, he suggested an approach that takes advantage of the local environment. Although natural farming is considered a subset of organic farming, it differs greatly from conventional organic farming, which Fukuoka considered to be another modern technique that disturbs nature…
    Rather than offering a structured method, Fukuoka distilled the natural farming mindset into five principles:
    No tillage
    No fertilizer
    No pesticides or herbicides
    No weeding
    No pruning
    …
    Native American
    Recent research in the field of traditional ecological knowledge finds that for over one hundred centuries, Native American tribes worked the land in strikingly similar ways to today’s natural farmers. Author and researcher M. Kat Anderson writes that ‘According to contemporary Native Americans, it is only through interaction and relationships with native plants that mutual respect is established.’ “

      1. “The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.” ~ Masanobu Fukuoka

        “According to contemporary Native Americans, it is only through interaction and relationships with native plants that mutual respect is established.” ~ M. Kat Anderson

        Key differences between natural farming and organic farming:
        * In organic farming, organic fertilizers and manures like compost, vermicompost, cow dung manure, etc. are used and added to farmlands from external sources.
        * In natural farming, neither chemical nor organic fertilizers are added to the soil. In fact, no external fertilizers are added to soil or give to plants whatsoever.
        * In natural farming, decomposition of organic matter by microbes and earthworms is encouraged right on the soil surface itself, which gradually adds nutrition in the soil, over the period.
        * Organic farming still requires basic agro practices like plowing, tilting, mixing of manures, weeding, etc. to be performed.
        * In natural farming there no plowing, no tilting of soil and no fertilizers, and no weeding is done just the way it would be in natural ecosystems.
        * Organic farming is still expensive due to the requirement of bulk manures, and it has an ecological impact on surrounding environments; whereas, natural agriculture is an extremely low-cost farming method, completely molding with local biodiversity.
        * There are many working models of natural farming all over the world, the zero budget natural farming (ZBNF) is the most popular model in India. This comprehensive, natural, and spiritual farming system is developed by Padma Shri Subhash Palekar.

        1. I generally don’t bother anymore with C M’s bullshit, but this time, he’s laid out the case for me, so that I can answer it faster.
          * In organic farming, organic fertilizers and manures like compost, vermicompost, cow dung manure, etc. are used and added to farmlands from external sources.
          * In natural farming, neither chemical nor organic fertilizers are added to the soil. In fact, no external fertilizers are added to soil or give to plants whatsoever.
          * In natural farming, decomposition of organic matter by microbes and earthworms is encouraged right on the soil surface itself, which gradually adds nutrition in the soil, over the period.
          * Organic farming still requires basic agro practices like plowing, tilting, mixing of manures, weeding, etc. to be performed.
          * In natural farming there no plowing, no tilting of soil and no fertilizers, and no weeding is done just the way it would be in natural ecosystems.

          In this so called natural farming, you’re trying to force a plant, say a bean, to grow in competition with ANY AND ALL other plants suited to the same piece of ground……… . These COMPETING WEEDS don’t have to produce a surplus beyond what’s necessary for their own reproduction. They virtually ALWAYS overwhelm the CROP plant, and smother it, so that it’s hardly worth bothering with growing it, EXCEPT for the plowing and tilling……. the very PURPOSE of which is to eliminate so far as possible the competition from WEEDS…… meaning any other undesired plant in the field.

          Anybody who knows shit from apple butter as the result of HANDS ON gardening or farming knows what I’m saying here is rock solid hard fact.

          * Organic farming is still expensive due to the requirement of bulk manures, and it has an ecological impact on surrounding environments; whereas, natural agriculture is an extremely low-cost farming method, completely molding with local biodiversity.

          The so called bulk manures simply don’t EXIST in sufficient quantity to make organic farming work ON THE GRAND SCALE , and if we move away from our current industrial agricultural system, such manures will be in far far SHORTER supply….. because they are mostly byproducts of industrial production of meat and grain, etc.

          * There are many working models of natural farming all over the world, the zero budget natural farming (ZBNF) is the most popular model in India. This comprehensive, natural, and spiritual farming system is developed by Padma Shri Subhash Palekar.

          Farms in a place such as rural India or China can pretty much work as ecosystems, because human wastes and all organic wastes available can be put back into the fields, and little is lost as a result.

          Farms in the industrial world aren’t ecosystem capable, because we REMOVE the crop or secondary product, such as beef or pork, from the farm to places far away……. and getting those nutrients so removed BACK to the farm is pretty much an economic impossibility under current conditions.

          I grew up working with my grandparents who started their lives with horses and mules, no electricity, no trucks or tractors, pretty much nothing in the way of purchased fertilizers or other chemicals.

          They were very skillful and hard working people, and they lived quite well……. enjoying fresh produce of many kinds IN SEASON…… from carrots to peas to peaches to grapes to beans … dozens of kinds. IN SEASON. The rest of the year, they either ate dried, canned or did without any particular kind.

          They produced enough for themselves and maybe three or four more families.

          Today we Yankee farmers produce enough for a hundred or more people per farmer, depending on the crop.

          Try talking a nicely turned out young woman who works in an air conditioned office into moving into a peasant type village and assuming a peasant’s lifestyle.

          I’m not saying organic farming can’t work on the grand scale, as a matter of scientific principles.

          I’m saying it WON’T work as a practical matter when it comes to modern societies and lifestyles without some SUBSTANTIAL disruption of both society as a whole and the lifestyles of individuals….. at least not anytime soon.

          But it could POSSIBLY work…….. eventually………. if we are willing to make the necessary sacrifices.

          1. OFM, long ago, on TOD, you gave me advice about growing apples, in a thread about farming. I’ll never forgot one thing you told me: Mow that orchard until it’s like a golf course!

            Indeed! We have few voles, and it’s always a pleasure to stroll among the trees. And the more time you spend in an orchard, the more problems you can see coming up to correct.

          2. I too have ‘missed out’ on CM’s postings for years.
            He is an armchair gardener as best I can tell.
            I would consider hearing his perspective on growing food once he
            no longer buys any food from beyond his property boundary.
            Before that, he is just philosophizing, and giving free lectures.
            As a wise elder once told me-
            ‘it is easy to philosophize about someone else’s problem’

            Overshoot is overshoot.
            NPK.

            I’d like to see the rough outlines of the CM business plan on his rabbit manure business. Photos of the packing shed would be nice too.

            1. I’d like to see the rough outlines of the CM business plan on his rabbit manure business. Photos of the packing shed would be nice too.

              Ditto.

              And when somebody convinces people to give up steak and roast beef for rabbit, there would then be enough rabbit manure to make a significant dent in the need for manufactured fertilizer, lol.

              It’s not that organic farming methods won’t or don’t work, it’s just that they work when you are REALLY willing to work at it, and at relatively small scales.

              I wonder where people who believe in one straw think they’re going to find enough organic materials to meet the needs of a grain farmers in the mid west who average over a thousand acres in grain each, so that they can give up manufactured fertilizers containing the necessary nutrients.

              I can grow a few tomatoes or cantaloupes or whatever with hardly any or no pesticides at all……… because small patches can make it with the aid of natural insect predators.

              But when you plant fifty acres, or a thousand acres, in a given neighborhood, the bugs that eat the crop generally outrun the ones that eat THEM, and you either spray or give it up, and go back to something more nearly bug proof, such as raising hay.

              I understand the basics of ecosystems, and how they work, and why they maintain themselves, year after year, decade after decade, for thousands and millions of years.

              But a farm in an industrial country just isn’t an ecosystem. You just can’t expect to move a hundred or two hundred bushels of grain per acre, without importing nutrients, over the long term. A natural ecosystem with wild grain might support going in and harvesting ten bushels per year, sustainably.

              Harvesting that much is realistic, because the animals that eat it live and die in the neighborhood, and poop and pee right in the field where the wild grain grows.

              The grain itself has adapted to growing and producing the right amount of seed to sustain itself, while still being able to compete for water, sunlight, space, and nutrients from the soil in competition with all the other plants around it, and having vigor enough to survive the inevitable attacks from various insects, fungus, virus, grazing animals, etc.

              The whole idea of farming is to create an artificial environment that enables the crop to produce an artificially large yield, in terms of commercial agriculture. If you want that big yield, you have to do things like plow, cultivate, irrigate, weed, add fertilizer, fight the bugs that want to eat your crop, etc.

              That big yield enables people like Caelan to live on food from the store, rather than living in a rural village in a place such as India.

              This applies to a substantial extent even in subsistence farming.

            2. “Ad hominem… refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.” ~ Wikipedia

            3. OFM —
              I my view farmers are victims of short term thinking. They are paid to maximize this year’s crop every year, regardless of the input costs and the soil degradation they cause.

              Farming is a lot like fishing. Fishermen are fishing the ocean out completely trying to maximize this year’s catch. In a few years the game will be over.

              Any famer getting government support should get incentives to reduce inputs and improve soil instead of just maximizing short term results.

          3. You might want to look up Gabe Brown on his 5,000 acre farm in North Dakota. He calls his farming regenerative, increasing his topsoil without tilling, fertilizers or insecticides.

            1. I suggest everyone grow, and buy, as much organic food as they can.

              But that doesn’t change the fact of gross population overshoot, and the dependency on fossil fuel derived fertilizer to meet the basic caloric and protein needs of probably about 2/3rds of world population equivalent.

              btw- I’m now reading the book Ron recommended previously on the history of the Nitrogen- The Alchemy of Air. Very good read.

      2. OFM and Mike B , 100% in your park . Not possible to feed 8 billion with any other farming but industrial farming . What CM is posting are pilot projects that will fail when scaled up . I give a simple example : in school I did an explosion in the chemistry lab , does that mean when I am grownup I can also do a nuclear explosion ? Last , OFM tks for drawing the line between natural farming and organic farming , till today I thought they were the one and same thing . I think that in the very near future this part of the blog is going to be dominated by food and water issues than by EV ,tech , renewables . As they say ” There are no volunteers for starvation ” .

        1. The reality no one wants to mention:
          We are vastly overpopulated in a collapsing ecosystem.
          Industrial Ag, fossil fuel dependent, is a short time solution, with major ecological consequences.
          Our historic population over the last 200,000 year has been 1-10 million, with a near extinction 65 million years ago.

          This is a predicament, not a problem.

  19. Solar energy in the USA will make the entire corn ethanol production obsolete in the decade of the 2030’s.
    That will free up a huge swath of prime farmland for return to wildlife…

    Just kidding- humans would never give that land back.
    But it will be available for other food/fiber crops.
    40% of usa corn production goes to ethanol.

    People talk in terms of oil production and reserves.
    Well, in the past 5 years solar energy has passed the point were it both technically and economically feasible over much of earth, and the non-expiring reserves of most countries now vastly exceeds any fossil reserves, or energy demand.

    There are a few exceptions- primary in Europe north of the alps, S.Korea and Japan. But the vast majority of countries can now collect more energy than they need- if they deploy the panels.

    1. EV adoption will reveal ethanol to be the silly joke that it is by the end of the decade. The ethanol lobby has, of course, come out strongly against EVs. The inevitable collapse of the ethanol industry and cattle industries because of plant-based meat substitutes will greatly improve the food situation globally. The farm belt is likely to suffer a severe prolonged recession however.

      1. That is why wind is so popular in the corn belt. It’s a much better use of the land.

  20. The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind My Amazing Gardening Results

    ”This is the reason my garden is producing so well this year, and will continue to do so in the future. I am confident that once you grasp this simple gardening truth, it will allow you to grow more fruits and vegetables. I helped arrive at this gardening truth through the words of Masanobu Fukuoka and the wisdom of many others. Gardening truths like most truths are simple but layered and deep, I hope I can help peel a few layers off the onion for you.”

  21. Indian states step up natural farming adoption
    Natural farming movement led by farmers and civil society has spread to states such as Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra among others

    “A research survey of ZBNF farmers by Amrita Bhoomi Centre, Karnataka, and El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Mexico, showed positive results with regard to yield, soil conservation, seed diversity, pest attacks, quality of farm produce, seed autonomy, household food autonomy, income, production cost and health, ending debt cycles and stopping farmer suicides in Karnataka.”

  22. Friends , here is a latest video . No place in cremation grounds ,so bodies are now allowed to be burnt on the footpaths . Wait until Mid May when the tsunami will really hit . Officially will about 800000- 1million infections per day and about 5000 dead per day . Unofficially multiply by 10 . Oxygen cylinders(16 lit) are selling in the black market for $ 750 . This in a country where where the Income per capita is $ 2100 per year .
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK0LbMcvGg4

    1. Tragedy.
      “Srinath Reddy, an epidemiologist and head of the Public Health Foundation of India in New Delhi, argues that people letting their guards down is a bigger driver [rather than the emergence of viral variants]. “The pandemic resurfaced in a fully open society where people were mixing and moving and travelling,” he says.
      With cases declining after last September’s peak, “there was a public narrative that India had conquered COVID-19”, says Laxminarayan. In recent months, large crowds have gathered indoors and outdoors for political rallies, religious celebrations and weddings.
      The nationwide vaccination campaign, which kicked off in January, might even have contributed to an uptick in cases, if it caused people to ease public-health measures. “The arrival of the vaccine put everyone into a relaxed mood,” says Laxminarayan. ”

      Meanwhile, VietNam has been a model of how to handle the pandemic-
      “How the country has kept coronavirus deaths to just 35, and grew its economy in 2020.”
      Travel restrictions, and masks.
      https://www.vox.com/22346085/covid-19-vietnam-response-travel-restrictions

  23. The subject of lithium supplies for batteries for renewable energy and EVs has been discussed here with those of us who think that it is one possible way to transition to a post Peak Oil world suggesting that these batteries will engender a recycling industry that recycles a share of these batteries similar to the share of lead acid automobile batteries that are currently recycled. From the description of the CNBC video linked to below:
    “Former Tesla CTO and Elon Musk’s right-hand man, JB Straubel, started Redwood Materials in 2017 to help address the need for more raw materials and to solve the problem of e-waste. The company recycles end-of-life batteries and then supplies battery makers and auto companies with materials in short supply as EV production surges around the world. Straubel gave CNBC an inside look at its first recycling facility in Carson City, Nevada. Watch the video to learn why battery recycling will be an essential part in making EV production more sustainable.”

    How Tesla’s Battery Mastermind Is Tackling EV’s Biggest Problem

    But beyond its partners, Straubel said the largest lithium mine could be in the junk drawers of America.
    “There’s only so many geologic sources of a lot of these key materials and for decades we’ve been digging it up and putting it in products and using it and so many of these consumer products are just getting locked away, stored in people’s drawers, literally at home or in their garage or in a shoe box. And over time, that collection of old consumer products stored up in people’s proverbial drawer at home has become, I think, the world’s largest resource of these materials.

    Another quote from the video:

    Recycling of batteries will be a absolutely crucial component to this whole 21st century supply chain. You’ve got a couple of problems and challenges to attack here. One is to get rid of the volume of end-of-life batteries that are going to be coming from EVs and that’s really going to take off 2025 onwards. The second thing is, what metals can you get out of those batteries and and what can you turn them into and what industries can use them again? And that’s a secondary problem. And so you’ve got a lot of pioneers right now looking at recycling. It’s going to be a big industry.

    1. Recycling batteries has been been required by law in many European countries for decades. It is now being applied to all EU countries in line with the EU Landfill Directive.

      Basically the EU is shutting down all landfills.

  24. From upthread, no more slots.
    ”

    OFM —
    I my view farmers are victims of short term thinking.

    They are paid to maximize this year’s crop every year, regardless of the input costs and the soil degradation they cause.Farmers aren’t PAID like employees, they are self employed, but this observation is basically correct, except it’s not a short term thinking problem.It’s a matter of doing what’s necessary to survive as a business man.

    Farming is a lot like fishing. Fishermen are fishing the ocean out completely trying to maximize this year’s catch. In a few years the game will be over.
    At least some of the fisheries are now more or less regulated well enough that they are likely to continue to exist if not thrive. I expect regulation to play a similar role in farm law and policy.

    Any famer getting government support should get incentives to reduce inputs and improve soil instead of just maximizing short term results.”

    Now that’s a good idea….. and it’s one that has in the past here in the USA been supported to the tune of billions of dollars over my entire career.

    But the amount of support has been trivial, in relation to the need.

  25. Tesla has decided to only sell its solar products with one or more of its powerwall batteries. This points to micro-grids and VPP (virtual power plants). Tesla as a utility or generation supplier. For software people, I recommend this video (and/or transcript) by Tesla’s VPP software team:

    https://www.infoq.com/presentations/tesla-vpp/

    Impressive. And fascinating.

  26. EV ‘Headline’-
    Honda is planning to completely phase out internal combustion engines from its North American lineup by 2040, the company announced Thursday night.
    That means a combination of battery-electric and fuel-cell models will add up to 100% of its sales by that time. The company spelled out that as interim targets, it sees those two groups making up 40% of its sales by 2030 and 80% by 2035.
    Honda doesn’t currently have a single battery-electric model in its North American lineup,…

    What this means is that Honda is pitifully far behind in the auto manufacturing race to catch the tsunami of change happening in the industry.
    In a way that is good.
    They are going to have to run hard to play catch up. Very hard.
    And that effort will propel the industry.
    If they fail to catch up, they will be a small company.

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